Current efforts for the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Long Term Evolution (LTE) and LTE-Advanced wireless communication programs are to bring new technology, new architecture and new methods in the new LTE settings and configurations in order to provide improved spectral efficiency and reduced latency. As a result, the radio resources would be better utilized to bring faster user experiences and richer applications and services with less cost.
As part of this effort, 3GPP is defining new procedures for the Radio Resource Control (RRC) and Radio Link Control (RLC) layers to help meet these goals. In the prior art (e.g., Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) specifications), an RLC entity of a transmitter did not request a reset after reaching a maximum allowed number of RLC retransmissions. Instead, the RLC entity would attempt to keep the call alive and initiate its own reset without the RRC being aware. To do so, the RLC entity would continue retransmissions and then continue with the reset procedure until the RLC was able to recover or until the maximum number of retransmission for RLC reset was reached. When the RLC failed, the RRC would initiate a radio link failure (RLF) recovery procedure, but would put the transmitter into IDLE mode rather than attempting a RRC connection re-establishment.
Current LTE proposals allow a RLC entity to reset using RLC control protocol data units (PDUs). However, this procedure can be complex. Accordingly, there exists a need for an improved method and apparatus for resetting the RLC entity.